What to Feature on Your Real Estate Website

Sep 7, 2018

If selling homes or helping people find a new place to live is not only your job but also something you love to do, having a website for that reason can help. It’s your digital business card and one you should be proud to offer would-be homebuyers or future apartment tenants.

However, not many real estate websites look that great or are something a realtor may be reluctant to share with others. So today, we’re going to help you figure out exactly what your real estate website needs and what else needs to be done for it (especially if you want to stand out against other companies!).

Designed for Easy Listings

When we say “easy” listings, we mean you should make it easy for the potential home buyer or seller to navigate through and explore the available listings of homes on your website. A search bar can go a long, long way in helping would-be buyers. This option should also enable people to filter their options such as location and price.

As for the search bar itself, many real estate companies or realtors choose to have integrated IDX search on their websites for a very good reason. IDX, or Internet Data Exchange, is how MLS listings for real estate show up on a website in the first place. It encompasses the rules, policies, and software which allows listings from the MLS database to be displayed to the public. So any MLS listings you see online are because IDX has been installed.

Having IDX on your real estate website is not the only beneficial design feature. A well-designed site template such as from WordPress is also recommended given its flexibility in its customizations and its professionalism. If you’re serious about your real estate company and you want to be taken as such online, then WordPress is the way to go.

Calls to Action

A well-written web page or a striking MLS listing is one thing, but neither will generate as many leads as you might like without a clear and compelling call to action. It can be as simple as placing a link in a sentence leading to your contact page or more in-depth such as adding a button that links directly to the realtor’s e-mail address. Try to come up with one that you know both works and piques the interest of would-be buyers.

Straightforward Contact Info

If you build a site, they will come…until they realize there’s no way to get in touch with you or the real estate agents in the first place! If you want people to be serious about purchasing a home from your real estate company, or about coming to you to sell their home, you need to make getting in touch as easy as possible. Make the contact information clear and visible not only on your website (both the header and footer works, as well as on a separate contact page) but also off of your website as well. By this we mean ensuring you have a Google business page as well as social media accounts (more on that later), all with the same NAP (name, address, and phone number). For more help with directories refer to our previous blog post.

SEO

No MLS listing or website will be visible anywhere unless you apply search engine optimization (SEO) to the website. This can be as simple as adding a title and description tag to every page you want to target or as thorough as adding alt text to the images you’re featuring—both which should be done.

It will also help to target long-tail keywords in your written copy as well as within the SEO itself. So long as the optimization and keyword targeting isn’t overdone, your site’s rank online will be stronger than before. The aforementioned contact information can also help to boost your site’s SEO and online presence; it will makes things easier for search engines to find and index your site.

An Intriguing About Section

Every sale should be built on trust. This most definitely applies to real estate. People are trying to find a new place to live, ideally for the majority of their lives. Help them find their home by being trustworthy. This means the about page on your real estate site should reflect that sense of authenticity and trust.

Pictures and Videos

One thing that homebuyers would rather find in the listings they’re looking at is either photos, videos, or even both of the house they’re interested in purchasing. A listing that is devoid of any media or photographs whatsoever makes the offer seem sketchy rather than appealing.

Videos can go further than pictures in that it can show off how it may feel while walking through the house itself. Make sure these videos are of high quality and show off the best features of the house you’re trying to sell (remember though that the point of the video should also be to build trust! No one wants to get excited over a house only to come to it in person and realize it’s not what was in the video.).

A Content Marketing Strategy

Google loves it when websites are updated frequently with high-quality content. This is why we highly recommend having a blog installed on your website and to have a strong content marketing strategy set up for your real estate company.

Publishing blog posts as often as possible on your site can generate online traffic where you wouldn’t have expected; try writing for home buyers your company is most likely to attract online. Information is definitely one thing they’re looking for! It doesn’t stop there though; that same content on your blog should go into e-mail newsletters as well as on social media accounts so that you’re distributing the content across several channels.

Social Media

Talking about social media, this is another feature you should definitely include on your real estate website. Use the blog we mentioned in our last point to your advantage by distributing the posts you’ve published through Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Instagram and even Pinterest hold many opportunities to showcase beautiful interior decoration and features you may not realize that people are looking up. Blog posts aren’t the only content you can promote for your real estate company, either; there are some good ideas in our previous post that you can check out.

So, want to get that real estate website you’ve always wanted for your company? At V3 Media we can make that magic happen. Give us a call today for a non-obligated and free price quote. If you’re still not sure whether we’re the right fit, why not consult with us one-on-one? You pick the location to meet up and we’ll grab you your coffee (or tea, or whatever’s your preference!).